I’ve run more than 7,000 kilometers over the past 10 years

First of all, usually my October post is some mention that I had moved to India X years ago and talk about a bunch of random shit. I truly have integrated into India because I have embraced the metric system! The above screenshot is from the running app I use – Strava. Over the past 3,650 days I have run 1,282 days and logged over 7,000 kilometers.

To put 7,000 km (4,375 miles) into perspective, the drive from Manhattan Beach, CA to Manhattan is 4,480 km (2,800 miles). The drive from Kanyakumari (the southern most tip of India) to Chandigarh is 3,056 km (1,910 miles). Damn!

Anyways, I was an early adopter of these running apps but I didn’t get onto the Strava bandwagon till recently. In fact, the first running app I used was RunKeeper which is now owned by shoe company Asics (I had no clue they were a Japanese company). It was one of the first running apps in the Apple App Store back in mid 2008. But I didn’t really start using it till October 2010. Then after a couple of years I switched over to the Nike Run Club (NRC) app because I liked the user interface of it.

Cut to 2019, I decided to check out Strava and see what all the fuss was about. I liked the overall interface and stuck with it. Then the pandemic hit and I had some time on my hands, so I went through the process of exporting all my running data from RunKeeper and NRC and importing it into Strava. It was a royal pain in the ass, but now that everything is in Strava I’m not going anywhere. At some point I will convert from the free plan I’m on currently to a paid plan and I’m sure Strava knows that. Freemium models work yo.

Below is a screenshot from a run I did in Berlin in 2019 and the level of data it spits out is quite impressive.

But by far one of the coolest features of the Strava app is Flybys – it shows people who also use Strava and if you crossed paths with them on your run. Wow!

My Strava profile

When you look at data over many years you start to see trends and I think that’s what great when you use apps like Strava. I had no clue that I ended up running on average every 2.85 days. Recently, I was looking at the data and saw I had completed a 90 day running streak and thought that was awesome…till I realized my high school friend Laurie G. is currently on a running streak that is over 2,500 days…OMG. Without data you are essentially flying blind.

Sidenote: Strava is a machine, they are currently in the processing of raising money that could triple their valuation to north of $1 Billion.